• tope •

Notes: The latest sightings of today's (still) Good Word all come from 'Merry Old': from Scotland, southern, western, and northern England. Charles Kingsley used it in his novel Westward, Ho! Most Americans will be unfamiliar with it, but it is alive and well, and holding its own in the UK. Tope is not to be confused with the color taupe despite their identical pronunciations. A hard drinker is a toper who indulges in toping.

In Play: The implication of this verb is heavy drinking over an extended period: "Miles Overland is off on another toping tour of the French wine country." It is also used as a general term for tippling: "Reggie, go down to the pub and bring your dad home; he's toped enough for one night."

Word History: There are two lines of thought as to the origin of today's Good Word. One school derives it from the Old French word toper "to accept a bet", which went on to become an interjection meaning something like "Done deal!" used when an agreement is reached. This interjection later was used in toasting and from there it became a verb meaning "to tipple". The other school derives the verb from the naval term, to top (a mast), meaning to lean, tip over, or topple, which had become tope by the mid-17th century. This led to the sense of "tip a glass". The latter hypothesis is the simpler and more straightforward and hence the more likely. (We are grateful to Ian Smallwood of Southampton for toping enough to discover today's Good Word and reacquaint his North American cousins with it.)

Ahh, my word! Perhaps I'll be brave and suggest a few more though the best ones seem to be taken. I'd probably only use it fairly self consciously nowadays in all honesty, and rarely tope to any extent except perhaps an extraneous digestif after supper on special occasions.

These days you may be warned, you will be considered rather regressive if you suggest tasking advantage of a woman due to her drinking is HER issue - though I'm not sure if that is the songwriter's message, quite.

I encounterd Madeira M'Dear in the folk music era of the 60's from my favorite group, the Limelighters. Their lead had a PhD in music or musicology or something, and their tenor, Glen somebody, went off on a solo career. They gave the song a campy and hilarious twist or ten. I must see if it's on YouTube, but I did transfer it from an LP to a cassette, which my car can still play.

Oh, if it's not telling secrets, why does Doc call you Ian, but you sign yourself lain?

Thirty-five years back, a small group of mathematicians studying the then novel subject of Oriented Matroids, concocted the word "tope" to name a relevant concept. The origin was clear: a shortening of "polytope". I don't think any one of us ever realized that the word already existed, albeit as a verb.

And speaking of niche words, I did find the Madeira song and was again reminded of "antepenultimate" a wonderful rhythmic word. I first met it in Hebrew class having reference to accents or something on the antepenultimate syllable. That's the syllable before the penultimate, which of course is the next to last syllable. I always wondered whether in really long words, like antepenultimate, would "pen" be the ante-antepenult? And do two syllable words become anti-antepenultimate?

Welcome to the forum amandel. Post often. Tope is new to me in the Good Doctor's definition and in your definition. I did do some little research on it just now and confirmed your posting. Fifty five years ago I studied graph theory and even wrote a very weak thesis in the subject. I turned to Systems Engineering and do not really qualify as a mathematician any more. But there are still some vague notions floating around in my head and a Master's thesis that I cannot now locate.

The welcome mat is out to mathematicians, Amendel. If you post on the subject at least of couple of our members may know what you are talking about, judging from their comments. On this forum, however, you are more likely to meet a trope than a tope. When you say, "the origin was clear," that reminds me of the refrain "It is intuitively clear..." in math texts, an expression which inevitably precedes something perfectly opaque. The authors of math texts seem to take a malicious delight (schadenfreude) at taunting readers with their superiority, "What is clear to us is obscure to you." It's enough to drive a student to tope, if any excuse is needed.

That said, I still have a layman's fascination with math and mathematicians. Maybe you could popularize math concepts on the forum as the occasion presents. Your assignment should you choose to accept it... Regardless, welcome.

This mistake is quite common: the right form is amandel, not amendel (preferably uncapitalized, but that will get no complaints).

MTC wrote:On this forum, however, you are more likely to meet a trope than a tope. When you say, "the origin was clear," that reminds me of the refrain "It is intuitively clear..." in math texts

I see I was not clear. A I mentioned, we concocted the word; the origin was clear to us, at invention time. "Polytope" is a word of common use at some math quarters, and we just shortened it.

MTC wrote:That said, I still have a layman's fascination with math and mathematicians. Maybe you could popularize math concepts on the forum as the occasion presents. Your assignment should you choose to accept it... Regardless, welcome.

This is not the first time I have seen a Good Word that has a mathematical use - I only posted this time because I was instrumental in tope's becoming. While some sciences create their technical terms out of Latin and Greek, mathematicians and computer scientists usually delight on taking common usage words and assigning them a technical meaning. Usually, there is an underlying metaphor, only understood by the author, sometimes there is some wordplay involved..

Anyway, if some word shows up that I know to be used in Mathematics, I will try to point it out whenever I can find an explanation so that the readers can appreciate the use without the need for a technical explanation.

Perry Lassiter wrote:I encounterd Madeira M'Dear in the folk music era of the 60's from my favorite group, the Limelighters. Their lead had a PhD in music or musicology or something, and their tenor, Glen somebody, went off on a solo career. They gave the song a campy and hilarious twist or ten. I must see if it's on YouTube, but I did transfer it from an LP to a cassette, which my car can still play.

Oh, if it's not telling secrets, why does Doc call you Ian, but you sign yourself lain?

I spent some time this weekend reviewing random 78 rpm records on a pre-war gramophone for entertainment. I think that beats your cassette! ('I belong to Glasgow' caused most amusement I believe). Wax cylinders anyone?

Interesting thread though - I might need to tope a little to get to grips properly with polychorons (4-polytopes).

I'd presume Ian to have been a simple transposition error - Iain is correct, though I'm not fussy.